Proving that you can never know everything about Lost, some of us may have just learned that Galaga is/was/could-be part of ABC's convoluted hit.
As I was listening to the summer edition of the official Lost podcast and trying to not count the months until the show's final season, I caught this video-game-related snippet. It's at 17:24 of the August 6 installment, during a conversation with two of the show's executive producers.
The men are discussing the recreational distractions that occupy the Lost writing office and turn to Alec Baldwin's favorite pastime:
Adam Horowitz, Lost Executive Producer: All I know is that there was a lot of Galaga in season three.
Eddy Kitsis, Lost Executive Producer: In fact, the name of the sub originally was going to be — in fact, did we name it that? I can't remember. We wanted to name it the Galaga because we were playing so much Galaga.
Horowitz: [Lost co-creator] Damon [Lindelof] and I got into a vicious, friendly competition on Galaga.
Kitsis: Yeah, Adam and Damon would literally play for 20 hours a day.
Horowitz: The problem became that we both got so good at the game. And I will concede that Damon ultimately did come off with the high score — although there is an asterisk attached to that, which is that he passed a million and then it goes back to zero, so the high score of mine of 970,000 is the one that's up on the board but he actually did get the high score...
Host: Was this a bit like your own King of Kong-type competition?
Horowitz: Kind of...
Kitsis: But there's no kill screen.
Horowitz: There was no kill screen, but by the end of it, it got to the point where we had both gotten so good that when one of us would start the game our first man would take a half an hour and the other one would have to go off and do whatever. It just became too much of a time suck.
As with everything related to Lost, there's a plot twist. In this case, the twist is that the sub already was called Galaga and that some people knew this. Somehow, despite discussing this show obsessively with my wife and fellow devotee/reporter Patrick Klepek, I never picked up on it before.